ZOS, Massive Spike in Ping/LAG in Recent Days - What Gives?

MedicInTheWild

@ZOS_Kevin

Any updates from the Engineering team?

The lag is still horrible and really becoming unplayable with the 999+ for several seconds at a time only returning to the 400 area. I normally have around an 80 with spikes up to 150 tops.

Kainarel

At least we're getting a maintenance tomorrow, so here's to hope things will get better and stabilize to some degree after it, unlike the last time.
We would very much appreciate any news on our issues and how they're gonna be handles, @ZOS_Kevin, please, consider dropping us a note here, we're all frustrated and worried.

As for me, still hightened ping compared to my norm and some lag spikes at random. Delays in using weapons at random times in random places and it doesn't show in ping as lag -- ping numbers are okay but it feels like lag anyhow. Sometimes getting booted due to lost lobby connection.
Still keeping away from pvp and battlegrounds hoping it would get lag issues resolved after maintenance. PC EU.

Jaraal

Kainarel wrote: »

At least we're getting a maintenance tomorrow, so here's to hope things will get better and stabilize to some degree after it, unlike the last time.

Yes, it should be better for a few hours. Going to try and set some time aside to play during peak efficiency time.

tronco01

Hello Zos! The lag has always been there, but it has been becoming strange. Most of the time, I could see the latency peaks, for example while traveling from one zone to another, which is kind of reasonable, spiking to +999 for a couple of seconds or staying in the 500 range for 4-5 seconds. Specially at Mournhold. But the difference to me now, is that I could be on a dungeon everything is fine, no peaks then all of a sudden my skills are not executing and after a few seconds all of them happen at once... or I am dead. Particularly happening in PvP zones. But during those moments, my latency never went over 120. So that is the weird factor. Anyway, hope it helps.

blktauna

anadandy wrote: »

Weapon swap delay in the new public dungeon Silorn. Swap, hit a skill, realize I was still on Weapon 1, swap again only to then have the original swap fire and be stuck in this loop of weapon swaps. PC NA.

this has been my life for the last week

In IC I'm getting ove 5 sec delay. In overland just collecting skyshards in DLC until the ESO+ runs out and the lag is horrendous.

Destai

@ZOS_Kevin can we get an update this week please? Also, there’s been many requests for some information on why this is happening, can that please be provided?

Bammlschwamml

So did the maintenance fix anything? Just asking as a Playstation player who might not want to buy the dlc tomorrow.

edward_frigidhands

Bammlschwamml wrote: »

So did the maintenance fix anything? Just asking as a Playstation player who might not want to buy the dlc tomorrow.

Hoping to test this myself in a bit.

Kainarel

For now it seems my ping is still hightened like before the maintenance, still lag spikes, so nothing seems to have changed as of what I saw so far.

Also, the health bar -- they took away the thick frame around it but it still glows with gold flame like crazy. Wish it would stop. I thought they meant to fix it but apparently that glow is not considered a UI bug or something?

Sporigudinai

I have a lot of problems right now. Some classes seems mor lag then others, some skills on my bar just desapear, i don´t know what happens. I need to test now after maintance.

Seravi

Since today's patch, 06/17/24 there is a delay trying to use the E key on letters, book shelves and anything to read. I hit E and it is taking 15 seconds or more for the game to acknowledge my input then I can read the document or get credit for the book shelf.

All traffic reporting I do is showing no issues, no packet loss and my usual 2-3ms to the server.

PC NA Telavanni Peninsula

Jaraal

Seravi wrote: »

Since today's patch, 06/17/24 there is a delay trying to use the E key on letters, book shelves and anything to read. I hit E and it is taking 15 seconds or more for the game to acknowledge my input then I can read the document or get credit for the book shelf.

This has also been an issue when harvesting survey nodes... for months. The character stares at a node for several seconds while you are spamming the [E] key, and nothing happens.

Photosniper89

Jaraal wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

Since today's patch, 06/17/24 there is a delay trying to use the E key on letters, book shelves and anything to read. I hit E and it is taking 15 seconds or more for the game to acknowledge my input then I can read the document or get credit for the book shelf.

This has also been an issue when harvesting survey nodes... for months. The character stares at a node for several seconds while you are spamming the [E] key, and nothing happens.

I've also been having this problem with quest boards (like dailies and what not). @ZOS_Kevin.

bunnydaisuki

I didn't want to add to this thread, but the connection for the past two weeks has been absolutely horrible. I was so hyped up to join my guildmates for the new trial, but had to quit halfway because of the high latency.

I can't even log in properly these past few days and keep getting placed on an infinite queue. If I'm able to log in, I'm greeted with a 999+ latency, and get booted out from the server after a while. Even the maintenance doesn't seem to help with the connection issues at all.

cptscotty

having 999+ latency hanging out it in towns now. People skipping around the screen. Not even close to prime time yet for NA and not a new populated area. Pinging the server gets some absolutely crazy high results too. Sometimes its 60ms...sometimes its 1000ms. Servers a level above the Texas datacenter are pinging just fine, its only ones directly to the NA server causing issues.

twev

Jaraal wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

Since today's patch, 06/17/24 there is a delay trying to use the E key on letters, book shelves and anything to read. I hit E and it is taking 15 seconds or more for the game to acknowledge my input then I can read the document or get credit for the book shelf.

This has also been an issue when harvesting survey nodes... for months. The character stares at a node for several seconds while you are spamming the [E] key, and nothing happens.

I'm getting tired of the action text on nodes being greyed out for multiple cycles longer than it takes to harvest them.
The same with other general interactions with the environment.
Been like this for, as you say, 'months'.
Many, many months.
Too many months.
It's really feeling like the game has become too big for ZOS's backend to handle, and it doesn't look like it's going to change without a more serious revamp than ZOS is willing to effort or pay for.

I enjoyed the game for a long while, but I'm playing it a lot less, now, than I have played other games that I liked as well and played longer than I have ESO.
Anymore - The juice just doesn't seem to be worth the squeeze.

otoh, I'm on the verge of saving a lot of money I was spending on ESO+ for several accounts, because of it, so, there's that.
Most of my die-hard friends have already quit the game entirely.

Photosniper89

twev wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

Since today's patch, 06/17/24 there is a delay trying to use the E key on letters, book shelves and anything to read. I hit E and it is taking 15 seconds or more for the game to acknowledge my input then I can read the document or get credit for the book shelf.

This has also been an issue when harvesting survey nodes... for months. The character stares at a node for several seconds while you are spamming the [E] key, and nothing happens.

I'm getting tired of the action text on nodes being greyed out for multiple cycles longer than it takes to harvest them.
The same with other general interactions with the environment.
Been like this for, as you say, 'months'.
Many, many months.
Too many months.
It's really feeling like the game has become too big for ZOS's backend to handle, and it doesn't look like it's going to change without a more serious revamp than ZOS is willing to effort or pay for.

I enjoyed the game for a long while, but I'm playing it a lot less, now, than I have played other games that I liked as well and played longer than I have ESO.
Anymore - The juice just doesn't seem to be worth the squeeze.

otoh, I'm on the verge of saving a lot of money I was spending on ESO+ for several accounts, because of it, so, there's that.
Most of my die-hard friends have already quit the game entirely.

This is something I've heard from too many players as well. I've lost track of the amount of friends that have given up on this game - purely because of the performance issues.

Technical debt is killing ZOS - hands down. They really need someone in a leadership position to put the foot down and come up with a solution for these challenges around performance. Yes, performance fixes/code refactoring, etc doesn't directly bring in revenue but it stops the bleeding and can have a large impact on players returning.

Just look at how many people returned when they lifted the cap on cyro. My friend list went from about 15 people online to 30+ in cyro - many players I hadn't seen in over a year.

I'll say it again, technical debt is killing zos and it HAS to be addressed sooner or later. @ZOS_Kevin

fizzylu

Logged on today for the first time since Saturday night and the ping spikes are terrible. Just did my daily writs and then logged out since there's no way I'll even bother trying to play when the game is lagging terribly when doing basic things like accepting mail attachments, picking up quests, and crafting items.
Even Saturday night, the first time I really played all last week, I had BGs filled with people complaining about lag and just the games overall performance (for me things felt weirdly delayed that night.... almost like the game was running in slow motion but I wasn't getting full-blown rubberbanding+DCs, etc).

I know ultimately it was my decision alone to purchase Gold Road despite my recent thoughts and stance on the state of the game.... but it also doesn't stop me from having regrets, haha. I swear, this game plays like it's giving up on itself and it feels like Zenimax is doing nothing to prevent it. I know they've said they are aware and are looking into it or whatever.... but seriously, I can't help but feel like it should not be that hard to make the game not run like it's about to give out at any minute.
Zenimax calls themselves a triple A game studio.... but they sure don't, or maybe even can't, handle ESO like they are one. And them just saying so doesn't actually make it so (yes, I'm still not over that hilarious gamesradar article).

Mathius_Mordred

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, sorry about the slow response. We've seen your comments and have been investigating what's happening here. After yesterday's maintenance, we made a change that we believe should have helped, but given some of the comments this morning, the situation still persists for some of you.

We're continuing to take feedback, so if there is anything specific you've noticed, let us know in the thread. Anything is helpful, like is it specific to a megaserver? Does the situation changes if you fully shut down and reboot? Is it specific to an area or specific content? We'll take your specific issues to our team to further investigate.

I noticed it this evening PCEU, parsing the trial dummy a 6 minute parse to kill the dummy, 90 seconds doing nothing, staff and DW, go for wall of elements I have to hit the key twice or even three times to register. Something is off, my ping is 90.

prodiginous_D

@ZOS_Kevin

999+ ping spikes still occuring post-patch. Ping is typically 50 -to- 120 ms. Spikes go to 999+, then fall to 300 -to- 500 ms. Spikes tend to happen within 15 seconds of my character landing in-zone.

If I don't press any keys for 5 seconds after landing, the ping spikes tend to be shorter -to- non-existed, and less severe.

PC-NA.

Happens every time I re-zone my character, whether through a wayshrine or a direct port.

Type of zone doesn't seem to matter; happens in both overland, public dungeon, and sub-zones (e.g.: zoned cities like Leyawiin, and zoned buildings like the bank in Leyawiin).

SeaUnicorn

cptscotty

Pinging the NA datacenter located in Texas USA I am getting results like 2536ms. Now pinging the server one level above ESO in Dallas its at 51ms. This is 100% on the ESO servers and datacenters. Not our ISP's. Not the ISP route. There is nothing we or anyone but the ESO devs can do to fix the issue.

Kainarel

Yeah, issues we have been reporting here still remain, alas.

offbymyself

I can't even play at this point. I can hear my game's audio without lag. I can hear my character light attacking and casting skills, but the game visual is completely frozen. I'll stay frozen for like 20 seconds and then unfreeze for 2 seconds just to freeze again for another 20 seconds. This is ridiculous. I've turned off all my add-ons. I've restarted my computer, restarted my game, and even repaired the game... but, naturally, the issue remains. Now I'm uninstalling and reinstalling, but I'm not hopeful. Everyone I know is complaining about insane frame drops but I'm the only one having these issues.

How hard is it to have ONE patch that doesn't absolutely break the game in some way or another? People shouldn't be DCing left and right, experiencing insane lag, or just straight freeze-framing for lengthy blocks of time. A lot of us pay good money for ESO Plus and can't even play the game.

Tulare_Verlaris

Just logged in since for the first time since I stopped playing in 2019 due to performance issues.

I saw it advertised recently and thought 'Why not take a quick look, see if it is actually playable nowadays'. Well having read a few threads and reading this it seems the same crap is happening regularly some almost 5 years later....

I wonder how this game is still going, lol. Oh well, this answered it, see you later. Maybe I will look in again in a few years or when something else Elder Scrolls in a multiplayer setting might become available!

MrGarlic

PCEU is bad tonight. Some zones are totally fine, but when I port to another, the ping is terrible 999+, impossible to play so I try to port to another zone and just get booted to the log-in screen.

It has been great for me the last week, but it has gotten bad again today.

Photosniper89

@ZOS_Kevin It's been a little bit - do you all have any update on how the investigation on these issues is going? Anything else we can provide to assist?

Seravi

I live in Texas very near the Data Center. I use to have two hops through Akami before the server but after the long maintenance a few weeks ago, those hops no longer exist for me.

Things are better for the most part but for some reason in the morning I still see the crazy 999+ lag and unresponsive game. My latency IN GAME says 80-120 and it is usually below 20 yet my pings and tracerts to the server are the same with the SAME 2-3 ms route.

I just had some hang ups before I logged off. Here is my tracert during that time:

Tracing route to 198.20.200.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms
3 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
4 2 ms 1 ms 2 ms
5 4 ms 7 ms 7 ms 12.243.129.206
6 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 12.123.18.97
7 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 12.250.251.14
8 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 198.20.200.1

Trace complete.

QueenOfBlades

Adding my voice to the rest. Even post-maintenance there are still constant kicks to the lobby/disconnections on PC NA.

Some zones, like Alik'r, I won't encounter the issue at all. While other zones, like Grahtwood, I'm lucky to last 10 mins before getting disconnected.

React

PC/NA. Tried PVPing a bit around 7PM EST yesterday in BR, 1 bar/1 bar/1 bar total population.

Extreme lag near the only fight on the map, which was seemingly just a single 12 man ball group with a few random solos following them vs a handful (maybe 10 at most) of DC defending a keep from the 12 man.

There was probably 30 players total involved in this fight, and half of them were simply standing on siege atop a keep. Massive ability delays, skills not firing at all, ping spiking randomly to 999+, people rubberbanding, etc. My duo who lives in another part of the country with a different service provider was experiencing the exact same issues.

This is an all time low for performance.